Automated Monitoring Tools

You can use the following automated monitoring tools to watch Amazon EC2 and report
back to you when something is wrong:

System Status Checks - monitor the AWS systems
required to use your instance to ensure they are working properly. These
checks detect problems with your instance that require AWS involvement to
repair. When a system status check fails, you can choose to wait for AWS to
fix the issue or you can resolve it yourself (for example, by stopping and
restarting or terminating and replacing an instance). Examples of problems
that cause system status checks to fail include:

Instance Status Checks - monitor the software and
network configuration of your individual instance. These checks detect
problems that require your involvement to repair. When an instance status
check fails, typically you will need to address the problem yourself (for
example, by rebooting the instance or by making modifications in your
operating system). Examples of problems that may cause instance status
checks to fail include:

Amazon CloudWatch Alarms - watch a single metric over a time
period you specify, and perform one or more actions based on the value of
the metric relative to a given threshold over a number of time periods. The
action is a notification sent to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
topic or Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
policy. Alarms invoke actions for sustained state changes only. CloudWatch alarms
will not invoke actions simply because they are in a particular state; the
state must have changed and been maintained for a specified number of
periods. For more information, see Monitoring Your Instances Using CloudWatch.

Amazon CloudWatch Events - automate your AWS services and respond
automatically to system events. Events from AWS services are delivered to
CloudWatch Events in near real time, and you can specify automated actions to take
when
an event matches a rule you write. For more information, see What is
Amazon CloudWatch Events?.

Amazon CloudWatch Logs - monitor, store, and access your log files
from Amazon EC2 instances, AWS CloudTrail, or other sources. For more information,
see
What is
Amazon CloudWatch Logs?.

AWS Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations
Manager - links Amazon EC2 instances and the Windows or Linux
operating systems running inside them. The AWS Management Pack is an
extension to Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. It uses a
designated computer in your datacenter (called a watcher node) and the
Amazon Web Services APIs to remotely discover and collect information about
your AWS resources. For more information, see AWS Management Pack for Microsoft System
Center.

Manual Monitoring Tools

Another important part of monitoring Amazon EC2 involves manually monitoring those
items that the monitoring scripts, status checks, and CloudWatch alarms don't cover.
The
Amazon EC2 and CloudWatch console dashboards provide an at-a-glance view of the state
of your
Amazon EC2 environment.